[经济广角]令人称奇的赚钱机器

提到美国的农业你首先会想到的会是什么呢？是发达的机械化？是一望无际的原野还是什么其他的呢？无可置疑的，与中国农业相比，美国的农业技术非常的现代化，但在本文中，我们为您介绍的并非是路人皆知的现代化机器，而是一种新的农业旅游经济——谷物迷宫，它不仅增加了农民的收入，更增添了一道美丽的经济风景线。

An Amazing Moneymaker

For city dwellers(城市居住者) and suburbanites（住市郊的人）, the month of October may just seem like a 30-day prelude （前序）to the spookiest（幽灵般的） night of the year. Far removed from "the land," it's easy to forget that October is also harvest time, when the rewards of the growing season are finally reaped. That also makes it the perfect time of year for cornfield mazes（谷物迷宫）.

According to the USDA（美国农业部）, between 1974 and 2002, the number of corporate-owned farms（企业拥有农田） in the U.S. increased by more than 36 percent, and between 2005 and 2006, we lost 8,900 farms. Family farms, as most folks know, need all the help they can get--and ag-tourism (农业旅游)like corn mazes is one way family farmers are increasing profits.

One man in particular has pushed the corn maze craze to the next level in the U.S. Brett Herbst started his own corn maze in American Fork, Utah（犹他州的亚美尼加弗）, in 1996, after reading about a similar enterprise in Pennsylvania. A recent agribusiness graduate （农业综合企业毕业生）of Brigham Young University（杨白翰大学）, he rented land and got to work. Herbst then helped his sister and a friend create mazes the next year. After the second year, the media began reporting on the mazes.

"So many people heard about [the corn mazes] from all different parts of the country. That's when people started calling us, and saying, 'Hey, we want to do something like this. What would it cost?' And we're going, 'Huh, we could probably charge money for this,'" recalls Herbst, who then started The Maize, a company with three full-time employees and many seasonal workers （季节性员工）that helps more than 190 farms create mazes each year in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Designs are only limited to the farmers' imaginations: Past maze themes include Napoleon Dynamite（拿破仑）, Gerald Ford （福特）and John Wayne（约翰韦恩）. Herbst, who still rents land to run his own maze in Lehi（利希，地名）, Utah, but owns a farm in Springville, Utah, even won the Guinness World Record for the world's largest corn maze in 1999 with a cosmic, space-inspired design.

Though most corn mazes are open to visitors only during October, Herbst starts helping his clients design the mazes in February. Some folks cut their own mazes, which begins when the corn is low in June, while others pay The Maize to do it. Herbst also offers marketing support, including a page on his website, though his clients arrange for their own aerial photographs （飞机上拍摄的照片）of the mazes. In the late autumn and early winter, Herbst takes care of his financial tasks and finishes up his own farming work. Then it starts all over again.

Out on the Farm（农场之外）

Laurie and Ken Graff are using The Maize's services on their family farm and ranch （农场和牧场）in Hondo, Texas（得克萨斯本州）, for the seventh year--though they do things a little differently. "Our maze is grown out of hay grazer（干草）, the stuff hay bales are made out of. Corn doesn't grow well in late July when our maze is planted, due to excessive heat and bug problems（持续的高温和虫害问题）," explains Laurie, whose 900-acre farm and ranch have been in Ken's family since the 1850s. They've had more than 110,000 visitors to their maze, not including their current season.

Laurie says they first decided to create the maze to diversify（多样化） and generate more income. Herbst explains that's often the case. With multinational companies（跨国公司） taking over the agriculture business, it can be very difficult to compete. "The family farm has 20 acres or 100 acres. How do you compete with this corporate farm that's got 50,000 acres and is bringing stuff in from Mexico or Australia," asks Herbst, who has helped create more than 1,200 mazes since 1996. "Ag-tourism（农业旅游） and corn mazes are an avenue to drive people directly to your farm and get that income directly from the consumer."

Extending the Experience（扩张经验）

Indeed, it's the value-added experience（增值的旅游经历） that brings visitors to farms. Most corn maze operators offer other activities, like hay rides（坐草车）, bounce houses（充气家具）, farming demonstrations（农场解说）, apple picking（采摘苹果）, pumpkin patches（收获南瓜）, mini mazes（小迷宫） or petting zoos（爱畜动物园）. "Successful mazes often are part of a larger ag-tourism business," says Dan Looker, business editor for Successful Farming magazine（《成功农场》）, who adds that some farmers also have opened bed and breakfasts or started companies allowing customers to be a farmer for a day.

"They aren't farming in the traditional sense," Looker says. "In fact, a maze is an entirely new business with a whole new set of planning requirements--crowd control（人群控制）, parking（停车）, increased insurance liability（增加保险责任）, additional hired help（额外的临时帮工） and the need to provide complementary services like food, refreshments, souvenirs, which also increase revenue."

In Temecula, California（加利福尼亚的蒂梅丘拉）, a growing area outside of Los Angeles, the Big Horse Feed and Corona Ranch and Land Company（公司名） offers different activities each weekend at its corn maze like "Old Fashioned Farm Days（传统农场）," which features demonstrations of blacksmithing（手工锻造）, wool spinning （羊毛纺纱）and sheep shearing（剪羊毛）.

"It's family entertainment. Everybody can enjoy it from 4 to 80," says Rose Corona, who runs the family ranch and business with her brother Steve. They donate all the profits from the maze to organizations like the YMCA（基督教青年） and the Marine Corps（海军陆战队）. "It's not anything fancy, but I think a lot of people think it's amazing because they never get a chance to go on a farm."

Chinese Agriculture VS American Agriculture

Nobody would deny that Chinese agriculture has entered a new era，但是与美国相比，我们仍然有很长一段路要走。 美国农业的生产方式和生产力水平都属世界最发达农业之列。The reason why it is so successful is partly due to its resourceful materials, and certainly part of their desire to create. 作为世界农业的重要组成部分的中国农业该如何吸取经验呢？

l、Learn the advantages of US agricultural policies

美国是一个市场经济发达的国家，伴随着农户根据市场价格信号、按照利润最大化准则自由地配置农业资源以推进不断现代化的过程，US government itself takes a lot of measure to meet the needs of the market，and intervene and control the development of agriculture，促进了农业代化的顺利发展。政府的干预措施起初只限于流通领域，以维持农产品价格为中心。从1933年罗斯福新政起，干预政策从流通领域延伸到生产领域，on one hand, it supports the price; on the other hand, it reduce the agricultural products, that is, to stop planting the over-grown products.

2、The constittute od American agricultural policies

农业保险（Agricultural insurance）是美国实施农业保护的一项非常重要的手段和方式。美国国会于1980年通过了农作物保险修正法案，将联邦农作物保险公司的股金增加两倍多，which covers all kinds of crops. 政府对农户所交保险费的补贴比例在50-80％，农户只需交纳少量保险费就可得到全额保险。为减轻自然灾害给农民可能造成的风险损失，政府对从事农业保险的机构提供大规模的保费补贴，从而使农民能以较低的利率普遍参加农业保险。1990年修订后的农业法规定，凡参加联邦农作物保险的农作物，在遇灾害时可根据农业保险的有关规定获得较高的赔偿，即使没有参加保险的农作物，如遇灾害时，也可获得按常年产量水平的40％给予赔偿。

So, we can introduce the successful ecperiences of US agricultural policies, paying more attention to the construction of the infrastructure, and researching to build a useful system to our country.